International Journal of Contemporary Sociology, vol.56, pp.55-85, 2019 (SCI-Expanded)
This study examines the development of the relations between the state and the women’s movement in Turkey in the period of Justice and Development Party (JDP) governments through the experiences and accounts of the major women’s organizations themselves. It puts the period since 2002 onwards, which is marked by subsequent JPD governments, under scrutiny, and points to an increasingly “irreversible distance” among independent organizations and the government, in line with a gradual transformation of the latter’s approach to women’s rights and gender equality. The fact that government has actively been creating its own “embedded” institutions, in this process, together with the increasing distance it puts to independent women’s movements, has crucial repercussions for women’s rights and gender equality in Turkey. On the basis of in-depth interviews with six major women’s organizations in Turkey, the paper examines this transformation in terms of (i) the dialogue and communication between the government and women’s organizations, (ii) the dialogue within the women’s movement itself, and (iii) women’s organizations’ own perception of change.